Incendiary Ventures
by Tozette
Summary: In which Zelgadis explores a temple looking for clues to a cure. Xellos decides to come with him, which in hindsight should probably be his first clue that it's all going to go pear shaped. Lina's hungry. There are monsters. Things explode. No pairings. Horror elements, comedy elements.
1. Chapter 1

Zelgadis's research into the old Morthewil temple indicated... well, not very much, actually.

Having exhausted the possibilities of Seyrunn's royal libraries meant that research was currently conducted by the light of a flickering spell in a dilapidated library into which he had not, specifically, been invited, and which he could only reliably access between about two and five in the morning.

Six weeks buried face-first in a pile of dry academic bitchfighting from a hundred years ago had revealed that nobody was really sure what had gone on at the Morthewil temple. There was some argument about fertility icons going on in the margins, and another one about dark cults in the text.

However, there was one decaying source from a drunken fur trapper who lived five hundred years ago, and all Zelgadis could make out was the phrase 'bring forth monstrosities both monster and human.'

Well.

That was the most promising thing he'd found in months.

Zelgadis extinguished his light and left, but the servants would fondly reminisce about their haunted library for generations.

* * *

Five days into Zelgadis's journey - and still five days away from Morthewil - Xellos showed up.

He did not leave.

The first day was mostly fireballs and yelling.

On the second day Zelgadis kept his temper all the way through his mug of extremely disappointing coffee. "Shouldn't you be stalking Lina?" he growled darkly.

"Lina-san?" Xellos tilted his head as though he'd never heard her name before. "Why, Zelgadis-san, surely you don't think that's _all_ I do with myself?"

Zelgadis exhaled noisily.

"Besides," said Xellos, almost as an afterthought, tapping his fingertips thoughtfully on his chin, "I'm interested in the Morthewil temple."

And that was all Zelgadis got from him. In five very long days of obnoxious laughter and agonisingly persistent chatter, all he managed to grasp was that some of the information he was seeking out might, somehow, be of interest to Xellos. Maybe.

All this meant that Zelgadis had a sneaking suspicion that the temple he was looking for housed a Claire Bible manuscript.

At the first hint of this suspicion, Zelgadis's temper took a marked turn for the worse and remained resentfully fixed.

* * *

Morthewil was a tiny settlement, and when Zelgadis arrived it seemed more or less empty.

Well, maybe it wasn't empty. But nobody in town would talk to Zelgadis, anyway.

It wasn't precisely _uncommon_ behaviour, but there were usually a few hardy souls ready to come out of their homes and demand to know his business there - or at least to round up the pitchforks. Here there was nobody: doors banged shut, shutters snapped down and a single passerby lowered his hood and pretended not to hear when Zel tried to get his attention.

"Maa... It seems awfully quiet," commented Xellos, tilting his head.

Zelgadis had been doing his best to ignore Xellos, but now that they were back in civilisation it was somehow harder. He felt raw and on the edge of something terrible, and even that one cheerful comment seemed maliciously cruel.

"Not really," he said in a hard voice, unable to help himself. Open, friendly towns were not for people like Zelgadis.

He shut his teeth against whatever he might have said next and firmly went back to pretending Xellos wasn't there. After five days alone on the road with him, it was something of an art form.

The townspeople's reticence wasn't that much of an obstacle here, anyway: the ruined temple was a hulking silhouette built on a hill in the deserted centre of the town, and it wasn't hard to find. It was enclosed in a big magical circle, which was even more fascinating for how unfamiliar it was. Zelgadis examined the runes for several long minutes, but all he learned was that his eyes hurt if he looked too long at them.

Ominous as that was, Zelgadis's research said that the temple hadn't been used for worship for more than four hundred years. He made a mental note to copy out the symbols when he was done so he could dedicate some time to researching them. He stepped over the edge of the circle without hesitation.

Something crunched under his boot - an old bone - but nothing especially magical happened. He eyed the runes.

Xellos had hesitated at the outermost rim of the circle and cracked one eye open, examining the writing. It didn't seem to bother him the way it bothered Zelgadis, which in hindsight seemed more ominous. "I don't think you'll find what you're looking for in there, Zelgadis-san," he advised him cheerfully.

Zelgadis scowled over his shoulder at the hovering priest.

Xellos shrugged, and then smiled a huge fake smile. "I won't stop you, Zelgadis-san. In fact, I'd be very interested to see what's inside, myself."

Probably _not_ a manuscript of the Claire Bible, then.

Probably nothing useful at all.

Xellos was still smiling.

Zelgadis did not trust it.

Rather resentfully, Zelgadis turned back to the looming temple and forged ahead. The Claire Bible wasn't the only source of arcane lore in the world.

* * *

Apparently, the temple was full of spiders.

All of them were the size of large dogs.

Some of them were poisonous.

"Shouldn't you be more grateful to have stone skin, then?" Xellos wondered, cheerfully examining the rips in Zelgadis's shirt. He was much too close.

Zelgadis thumped him on the head with a stone fist. It didn't fix anything, but he felt marginally better.

Xellos gave him a wounded look and rubbed his head.

* * *

Five hours later, Zelgadis had fought and dug his way a mile underground. He was covered in the slimy innards of two giant spider infestations and his exploratory spirit was definitely flagging.

Worse, there was virtually nothing in the temple. Aside from the carvings in the walls, the rest had been cleaned out by the kind of scavenging tomb raiders Zelgadis hated with a hypocritical but genuine loathing. (Vultures out to make some coins from old temples hardly needed their contents as much as Zelgadis did.)

But after all that, the carvings in the temple didn't seem to be very useful, either. Zelgadis couldn't read - did not even recognise, actually - the script, and the decorative pictures seemed disjointed and strange: a parade of writhing black streaks and things with too many legs juxtaposed against what looked like heavily pregnant figures laid out in orderly rows.

No wonder the academics of the Sorcerer's Guild had been so puzzled.

Zelgadis was forced into the same kind of thinking.

"Some kind of fertility iconography?" he guessed aloud, running his fingers over a carving. It was academically interesting, but nonetheless bitterly disappointing. Fertility icons were unlikely to be of any use in fixing his body.

Xellos peered over his shoulder, so far inside Zelgadis's personal space that his purple hair brushed one pointed ear. Zelgadis clenched his teeth, but the circle of Zelgadis's lighting spell was small enough that it wasn't reasonable to protest. Annoyed, Zelgadis glanced at him, but his smiling face revealed nothing.

One of Xellos's gloved fingers hesitated over the carvings, not quite touching, at the mouth of one of the pregnant figures.

"If it is, then the artist wasn't very good," he said with a smile in his voice.

It was true: on further examination, all their mouths were drawn open wide and gaping, and their eyes were drawn as ugly black holes.

Zelgadis scrunched up his nose. "Probably," he said, because bad art was a fact of life no matter when you lived. "Those don't really look like anything, either," he tapped one of the graceless black things.

Xellos hummed thoughtfully, but didn't comment.

They continued deeper into the temple.

At the deepest room was a stone altar, which had clearly once held something. But whatever had rested there was long gone, leaving nothing but the polished stone and a protective circle of unfamiliar symbols. All that remained there was a dark smudge and the lingering smell of rot.

Feeling marginally less resentful - or perhaps just more defeated - Zelgadis looked sideways at Xellos. "Can you read any of this?" he asked, not really expecting a useful response.

Xellos's eyebrows rose a fraction. "I can read that," he said, gesturing to the words carved into the altar.

Leaning closer, Zelgadis realised that he could, too.

All it said was '_GAZE UPON ME AND DESPAIR_'.

Zelgadis felt something shiver in his bones, some deep atavistic instinct, and of course Xellos beamed. "What a fascinating sentiment!"

"I'm leaving," Zelgadis said flatly. He ought to know when to leave well enough alone.

He didn't think that the temple had a lot to do with breaking curses or healing, or even with the creating of chimeras.

Zelgadis turned right back around the way he had come and headed for daylight. He didn't hear Xellos following, but he kept walking. Xellos could stay here and rot.

The temple was cold, damp and completely silent, so that the only noise was really Zelgadis's footsteps, and even those seemed uncommonly loud in the darkness. About halfway up, he stepped on the leg of a dead spider. It crunched in the darkness and he flinched.

The echo lingered for just a second too long.

Zelgadis froze, sharp ears pricked, and waited for a long trembling moment in the silence.

He had not noticed before how the chill of the temple soaked into him.

There was no sound. Nothing moved beyond the illuminated circle of Zelgadis's lighting spell. For the first time in days, he was alone. He wondered where Xellos had gone.

He exhaled slowly. Well, fine. Sometimes these old temples had strange acoustics and things did echo oddly. He shook it off as a momentary lapse in judgement and kept walking.

It came again, at the edge of Zelgadis's hearing, and this time he definitely heard it: a long scrape.

He stopped again.

It was quiet. He scowled. He was too old and too jaded to have his mind playing stupid tricks because of one spooky temple. He listened closely, but there was nothing but silence and darkness.

There was no sound at all, actually: not an echo, not even the scuttling of hairy spider legs. That was... strange.

Then, in the silence: _scrape_.

It was measured and deliberate, the sound of something dragging against the stone.

Carved into the wall beside him, a human face gaped stupidly, sharp in Zelgadis's light. There was something wrong with it, something Zelgadis couldn't pick. He stared at it for a second.

Another scrape sounded in the dark.

It wasn't that important. He put one hand on the hilt of his sword and sped for the exit.

The scraping followed him, unhurried and deliberate.

Zelgadis scrambled out into the daylight and pulled the temple doors shut after him. His heart was racing.

He looked at the runes carved into the doors and took a deep breath. He waited for a long moment outside the temple, ears straining for that faint scraping, but he could hear nothing.

He rubbed his forehead. "Idiot," he muttered, allowing the little glow of his lighting spell to faded. "Letting yourself get carried away like that."

"Ain't nothing left in there, lad," said a voice right behind him.

Zelgadis leapt and whirled, wild-eyed and with a fist full of fire.

"Easy! Easy now, lad." The voice was a tiny, wizened old fellow in patched clothing.

Zelgadis nearly sagged with sudden relief. He exhaled slowly and let his burgeoning fireball dissolve into a stream of smoke on the breeze.

"What do you want?" he growled, rubbing his sooty fingertips together.

The old man spat onto the dirt and eyed Zelgadis, looking much less friendly now. "Nothing from you, lad," he said stiffly. "Though you might consider getting some manners."

Zelgadis grit his teeth. "Sorry," he said shortly. Days with nobody for company except Xellos _had_ eroded his people skills a fair bit. Not that they'd been stellar to start with.

The man sniffed. "Only thought you should know Old Tony cleared that place out two weeks ago - paid off some gambling debt to some out of towners. There's nothing for a boy like you in there anymore."

Zelgadis scowled fiercely. "Two weeks ago?" he said. There was probably nothing useful associated with the temple at all, but he may as well do the thing properly - and Zelgadis did hate loose ends. "Where can I find Old Tony?"

* * *

Old Tony's place was near the centre of town. Like most of the houses in Morthewil, it was a sturdy wooden structure with a broad little porch. By the door was a pair of dirt-crusted boots, and the place smelled incongruously like old meat and other organic garbage.

Zelgadis covered his nose and knocked.

Predictably, nobody answered.

He drummed his fingers against the wooden door frame for a few long seconds. The temple had seemed like a promising lead while he was back in some nobleman's library on the outskirts of Zoana, but now he was nearly certain there was nothing useful to be had there.

It probably wasn't worth breaking into some old man's house for.

The harsh cries of crows drew his attention suddenly up to the roof. Xellos was perched cross-legged on the edge, and his sudden appearance had frightened away the birds.

"Thought you'd left," said Zelgadis sulkily.

"Had to check something," Xellos said.

Zelgadis opened his mouth to ask what, and Xellos smiled knowingly, and he shut it again.

No. Just no.

"Well, I hope you had a nice trip. I'm going back to the library," said Zelgadis, and turned on his heel.

"Ehh?" Xellos dropped from the roof to the ground easily and without any noticeable impact. "So cold, Zelgadis-san," he said mournfully, and Zelgadis kept walking, determined to ignore him. "Don't you want to know what killed Old Tony?"

Zelgadis stopped, and then hated himself with a powerful loathing. When, _when_, would he learn to stop listening to Xellos? "Killed?"

Xellos raised his eyebrows. "Can't you smell that?"

All he could smell was -

Zelgadis stomped back to the front door and kicked it down, heel to the lock. The wood splintered and gave, swinging open.

It couldn't open all the way, because it came to rest against a body. It wasn't Old Tony, though.

It was a dog, a big one, something like a wolf hound in life, although now there were insects busy in its every orifice and Zelgadis didn't really want to look much closer. The smell of rotten meat rose off its body like a malaise.

"Congratulations, you found a dead dog," said Zelgadis drily.

Xellos didn't say anything. He didn't have to. They both knew that nobody lived in a house with dead things rotting in the doorway - except maybe people _Xellos_ knew. The mazoku certainly didn't seem bothered by the smell.

"This has to be at least a week old," Zelgadis muttered, stepping over the threshold. "So Old Tony has been gone for..."

There was another mess, a dried splash and a flaking hand print, just beyond the dog's body.

And drag marks.

Long, bloody drag marks.

He could see where somebody had clawed at the walls, pulled inexorably through the house by something stronger.

"Do you know, this is really not my problem," said Zelgadis, straightening. He turned to Xellos with his hands on his hips.

Xellos was standing right over the dog's body, colossally unconcerned by the implicit carnage of the scene. "Certainly not," he agreed cheerfully.

He _should_ just go back to the library. This sort of thing happened all the time, and there was usually some brave but stupid hero knocking around to deal with it - eventually. Somebody like Amelia.

At the thought of Amelia he almost flinched.

"_Dammit_," he growled, and set off through the house.


	2. Chapter 2

The bloody trail disappeared entirely in the back yard, leaving Zelgadis with the uncomfortable impression that Old Tony's murderer had wings.

"Or magic," he muttered darkly to himself.

Zelgadis was kind of hoping for wings, but he was prepared to be disappointed.

He was also hoping it was murder, but he was prepared to be disappointed there, too.

"Maybe somebody saw something," said Xellos helpfully.

He'd probably be a lot less annoying if he was even a fraction less cheerful. Zelgadis suspected that Xellos already knew that quite well. "Maybe," he agreed, instead of snapping like he wanted to. "Let's find out."

He tramped back through the front of the house, stepping carefully over the dog's body, and stared balefully at the next door over.

For a few long, increasingly depressing seconds, Zelgadis contemplated how he'd make these shy villagers open their doors to a sword-wielding chimera covered in spider innards.

But then he heard somebody yelling down the street, in a voice so aggrieved it took him a second to actually recognise it.

"Ah!" said Xellos, "is that Lina-san?"

Zelgadis turned.

"AND WHEN I GET MY HANDS - Zelgadis!" Lina's voice was shocked.

"Lina," Zelgadis blinked at her. "...Gourry."

"Zel!" said Gourry, smiling.

"What are you doing here?" they asked in unison.

"There's a buffet!" Gourry said cheerfully.

"A buffet," Zelgadis echoed.

Lina waved a pamphlet at him. "Morthewil is supposedly famous for its All-You-Can-Eat-For-A-Silver-Coin Buffet," she said.

Morthewil was a ten-house community in the middle of a partially-cleared forest land, mostly populated by fur-trappers and farmers. He couldn't think of a single building in this town that even offered food to outsiders.

"Really?" Zelgadis said dubiously. He took the pamphlet, examining it. Morthewil, as far as he knew, was actually famous for its creepy and very suspicious temple. But the pamphlet did promise an all you can eat buffet.

"I thought it would be interesting because we'd never even heard of it," said Lina, scowling darkly.

"Does that mean there's no buffet?" Gourry asked, frowning around as though food might appear magically.

Lina made a distressed noise, as though the very possibility offended every fibre of her being - and then she caught sight of something over Zelgadis's shoulder.

"_Xellos_," she growled in a voice like thunder.

Zelgadis sighed.

"Ah, Lina-san! Fancy meeting you here!"

And as he shielded Gourry from the ensuing explosion, Zelgadis supposed he knew exactly what had happened here.

* * *

Beautiful and terrible in victory, Lina was bellowing into Xellos's ear from where she had him firmly in a headlock.

"Anybody can make a mistake," he said with a weak, placating smile. The headlock itself didn't seem to bother him much, but it looked like it was making Lina feel better.

"Excuse me," said Zelgadis in a steady voice, but it was like ordering a cat to fetch.

"And you just _happened_ to pick up a pamphlet for the famous Morthewil buffet?" she yelled.

"How was I to know?" pouted Xellos.

Zelgadis was tired, angry and covered in spider goo. He smacked Xellos over the head with one stony fist. "_Lina_," he growled.

She blinked as though she'd forgotten he was there. "Oh, Zelgadis."

Gourry gave him a sympathetic look. "Did he trick you into coming here, too?"

Zelgadis frowned. He hadn't thought so, but now he wasn't sure. It wouldn't have been that hard to slip the one page that made him pack up and leave his library in amidst all that research.

He eyed Xellos uncertainly.

"It's very flattering, Zelgadis-san, that you think I could be as devious as all that!"

Zelgadis determined to ignore this. He turned back to Lina. "I came here because of the temple... there's some hints that the priests used to make human chimeras. Maybe," he added, frowning. "Well, the research is pretty thin. But I thought it was worth a look."

"Ah," said Lina. "Still hunting for a cure, then," she said with a half-smile. "You never give up."

Zelgadis wasn't sure how complimentary that actually was. He forged on ahead instead of contemplating it. "I went to the temple, and there's nothing there... except the spiders," he added, eyeing his shirt. The spider goop would dry out eventually, and then it'd be a nightmare to get it out. He needed a bath rather badly. "One of the villagers cleaned it out a couple of weeks ago and, supposedly, sold the things inside to some travellers."

Candlelight made Lina's eyes glimmer when she leaned forward. "Supposedly?"

Zelgadis sighed and scratched his forehead. Something flaked off. More spider goo. Excellent. "I went to see the villager - Old Tony. His dog's dead. And someone dragged him off into the back and then disappeared."

"Hmm," said Lina thoughtfully.

"Zelgadis's next move was to round up the whole town and interrogate them," smiled Xellos.

Lina, bless her, did not look at him like a spider-goo-covered chimera ought not to inspire much confidence in the townspeople. Instead she nodded.

Then she took a deep breath. "COME OUT, COME OUT!" Lina screamed at the top of her lungs.

There was silence. It seemed sightly more stunned than the previous silences, but Zelgadis was willing to admit that this was probably the effect of perspective. A tumbleweed drifted past Zel's boot.

"- BEFORE I START SETTING HOUSES ON FIRE!" Lina added, tapping her foot impatiently. In her hand, a ball of light began to glow and smoke.

"_Lina_," said Gourry, looking worriedly at the fireball.

Doors opened.

"It's so nice to have the group all together again!" Xellos said with a sigh of contentment.

* * *

"So," said Lina one hour later, well into her fifth bowl of soup (supplied by a hand-wringing farmer, who didn't seem entirely thrilled to have them all in her home), "three missing people - the girl, her mother, and Old Tony. That's a lot for a town of this size. Even including the surrounding areas there can't be more than fifty people living here."

Zelgadis nodded grimly. He was still covered in spider guts, so everything was pretty grim from his perspective. "The way I see it, Old Tony took something from the temple and made whatever guards it angry, and now it's going off murdering people."

"That seems reasonable," said Xellos, nodding.

"Not really, but it's the sort of thing a temple guardian would do," Lina corrected. "Did you see anything like that down there?"

"I'm... not sure," Zelgadis admitted, thinking only of that soft scraping noise. There might have been something down there, or it might have been a product of an overactive imagination. "I wouldn't necessarily discount it," he said finally.

"Okay..." Lina frowned at him, but that was all she was getting. After a second she seemed to accept this. "So either we track down whatever he stole and put it back," she said, holding up one finger, "or we go kill the temple guardian."

There was silence for a few seconds.

"This was weeks ago," said Gourry, scratching his chin. "If the other option is tracking these out-of-towners... I think it might be better to fight the temple guard guy."

"I hate to say it," Lina said, "but I think Gourry's right."

Zelgadis rubbed his wrist nervously. "Okay," he said after a few moments.

"Good," said Lina. "Lady," she yelled over her shoulder. "We're going to take you up on that offer to use your guest rooms."

"My gu - I didn't make any offer," sputtered the farmer, sticking her head into the room and scowling at them all.

Lina stood and clapped her on the shoulder. "I know a kind soul like you wouldn't let travellers go without a bed," she insisted, smiling winsomely.

"Well... that is - but..."

Gourry, Xellos and Zelgadis watched Lina steer the lady through her own house, masterfully parrying her every objection.

Given that there was only one bed, all of them elected to sleep on the floor. Gourry was snoring within the first ten minutes, and Xellos disappeared to - who knew what. Cause trouble, probably.

If there was any mercy in the world, Zelgadis thought sleepily, he'd be causing trouble for somebody _else_ for a change.

* * *

Morning dawned clear and fine, and saw Zelgadis wearing his last clean outfit, freshly-scrubbed of all traces of spider innards. It was a beautiful and decidedly non-itchy feeling.

The morning sun did not make the temple any less ugly. It jutted into the sky, jagged and broken around the edges.

"And you went in there alone," said Lina, peering at those unfamiliar runes.

Zelgadis opened his mouth to point out that he'd had Xellos for company. He hesitated. Maybe not. It probably wouldn't help his argument. "The circle didn't do anything," he said.

Lina looked at him, but didn't say the 'yet,' that was so clearly on her mind. "Oh, well, whatever," she said instead, and sauntered across the edge of the circle. It didn't react to her, either.

Inside the temple was just as dark and confusing as Zelgadis remembered it. this time, he and Lina cast the lighting spells and Gourry carried a torch.

The carvings on the walls were better lit, and all the more confusing for the extra light.

"A fertility temple..?" Lina said dubiously, looking at them.

"That's the theory," Zelgadis agreed. "Although nobody really seems to know."

"Doesn't seem that likely that a fertility temple would have some kind of crazy murderous guardian, does it?" Lina said slowly, touching a carving.

"Not in hindsight," Zel muttered. "But you tell me what else this is meant to be," he poked the hugely pregnant belly of a carved figure.

"Zel? Lina?" Gourry interrupted. "They're not women."

"What?" Zelgadis turned. The light from Gourry's torch was warmer, more organic and less constant that the spells, but it was plenty to see by.

"Well, they're not all women," Gourry pointed at a face on the wall. It was just as staring and blank, but he was right that it didn't look feminine.

"Well, maybe the artist..."

"Look at this one," Lina said sharply, shoving her hand in front of Zelgadis's face. Zel jerked back. The figure her finger rested on had a grossly distended stomach - and also a painstakingly carved penis.

Zelgadis just looked at it for a long moment. "Well," he said finally. "Excuse me for assuming all the pregnant people were women."

It had seemed like a safe bet at the time.

"Maybe they're not pregnant?" Gourry said guilelessly.

The three peered at the huge-bellied figures on the wall, each trying to figure out another cause.

In the darkness down further, something went _scrape_.

Smiling, Lina turned toward the sound. "Sounds like our temple guardian just now," she said, tossing her flaming hair back.

"Probably," said Zelgadis darkly. There should have been a sense of inevitability: they'd meet the guardian, they'd kill the guardian, they'd be back on the road in time for dinner. But there was not. Even with Lina and Gourry for company, Zelgadis felt the sound of that scraping like an ache in his bones.

"Zel?" said Gourry.

He looked at Gourry and squared his shoulders. "Let's just get this over with."

* * *

The trio set off toward the scraping noise, but even facing it head-on with their own magic lighting the temple's halls brightly from above, nothing blunted the horror of the thing.

Zelgadis didn't even get much warning for it. They approached a corner, and then walked around it, and there it was.

A tall man, easily Gourry's height, wasted with bruise-dark circles under his eyes, in his cheeks, forming a necklace around his neck. He was naked, and the swiftness of his wasting showed every muscle and tendon under his greying skin.

The scraping sound was the soft sound of a foot dragging at the end of a broken ankle, which was dark and swollen.

The carvings on the walls didn't really do it justice: his stomach was enormously swollen with the skin stretched so tight it was nearly translucent in places. It wasn't a neat, even circle, either: lumps and pieces moved under that stretched skin.

While Zelgadis watched, something in the man's gut jerked. A forced noise came from his throat, but his eyes were wide, white around the edges, blankly staring.

He stumbled toward them. He was sweating terribly.

"Well that's... unexpected," said Xellos thoughtfully, appearing in the air behind them, perched on nothing at all with one knee crossed over the other.

They all flinched at the suddenness of his appearance, but nobody said anything.

The man stopped, heavily pregnant belly jiggling with the sudden movement. There was another jerk inside him, and a thin whine, and a sudden wash of blood down his front -

- and his belly burst like overripe fruit.

Blood and darker things spilled from him, and broken, lumpy bits that Zelgadis was sure were meant to stay inside hit the floor with a thick, wet spatter.

The body fell twitching on suddenly strengthless knees, and his burst stomach just kept leaking things, horribly wet things that glistened in the light of their spells, and they all watched, frozen, as he twitched and seized and died.

The last thing that crawled out of him was a many-legged shadow, dark and angular, with a long, whiplike tail. It ignored them completely, picking delicately through the body to gnaw at the man's spilled organs.

Zelgadis swallowed.

"That's not good," said Xellos conversationally. He sipped a cup of tea, and Zelgadis swallowed, mouth suddenly filling with saliva and bile.

Xellos tilted the cup toward him. "Tea?"

Zelgadis slapped a hand over his mouth and glowered fiercely at him.

The dark thing's shell was hardening by the second. Grimly, Gourry severed its head, and they moved on.

They found the missing villagers, and Old Tony, and a few others who could only have been the travellers from out of town to whom the temple goods had been sold.

Zelgadis had thought he'd seen a lot of awful things. He felt like Rezo's experiments and the birth of a dark lord should have prepared him for basically anything, but the sight of bodies with torn ribcages, picked clean of nutritious innards by ugly many-legged monsters in chitinous armour... that would stay with him.

The youngest missing girl was still alive, but so wasted and broken that they all knew in a glance she'd never be fixed.

They killed her, clean and quick, and then slit her down the middle while the creature inside was still soft and defenceless.

"I think that's it," said Gourry at last.

"Good," said Lina angrily. "Let's get out of here so I can blow this whole place sky high."

Of course, that was when the ground started to shake.

"Ah," said Xellos. "Lina-san."

Zelgadis saw her clench her jaw, in the way one did when Xellos opened his mouth. "What?" said Lina flatly.

"Don't you usually need more than one party to a pregnancy?" he said delicately.

* * *

"CRAP CRAP CRAP," yelled Lina, flying at speed with Gourry shrieking, dragged along behind her by one wrist. Zelgadis sped to keep up.

Behind them, something huge and dark shouldered its way up through the ruins. Rock tore, and shudders ripped through the temple. The carved faces on the walls looked writhing and grotesque when they trembled.

They tumbled out of the temple entrance in a spill of slightly-bloodied, dirty adventurers, and Gourry suffered the terrible indignity of being beneath Zelgadis when he landed. He grunted as all the air was forced out of him.

Zelgadis hauled himself to his feet, drawing his sword with a practised swipe that made it sing against the sheath.

"Lina," he growled, hunching into a defensive position.

He needn't have bothered: she was right there with him, fire burning in both hands.

A second later the temple burst with a sound of breaking rock. The stones it was built of broke and shattered, chips streaming out in all directions from the terrible force with which it burst.

"What _is_ that?" Zelgadis wondered, staring at the thing.

It was huge. It was winged. It was betentacled. It... dripped.

God, it _stank_.

"Ah," said Xellos, perched on the roof of a house some distance away. "Why, it's a mazoku of course."

"Friend of yours?" Lina yelled snidely.

Xellos laughed, obnoxious and unhelpful, and disappeared.

The monster roared and hurled itself at them while Gourry was still scrambling to his feet. "Gourry!" Lina yelled.

Zelgadis was quick to shield them with a huge protective barrier of air, but defence was not his specialty, and nothing would hold for long against the sheer bulk of the monster. It broke through and slammed into them, sending them all flying.

Zelgadis let muscle memory take him into a roll and scrambled to his feet just in time to see the mazoku barrel into a house and crush it. There was a terrified bellow from somewhere inside that cut off abruptly.

Doors banged open and villagers flew into the streets, yelling and panicking blindly. Somewhere behind him, Zelgadis could hear Lina begin an incantation with, "_Darkness beyond twilight_," and he braced himself to get the hell out of the way.

The monster, evidently confused by all the noise, snagged a panicking villager in one long tentacle and raised him for closer inspection. Zelgadis had just enough time to think _this can't end well_ before the man was skewered by a tentacle that entered through his mouth and existed from the belly. There was a burst of blood and thicker things, and a wet spatter on the debris of the broken house.

Gourry charged forward with an angry cry. Sunlight blazed on his armour and the wind of his momentum streamed through his golden hair.

Zelgadis swore and dashed in after him, one hand blazing with magic. If he could distract it, Gourry could hit it. They _had_ to avoid those tentacles.

Lina was nearly finished her incantation. Zelgadis moved faster.

He was still out of range when he slapped his palms to the ground. There was a rush of magic, a tremor of earth. "_Dug haut!_"

Huge spikes of earth leapt upward, spearing monstrous tentacles and slimy flesh alike. Gourry sped through the holes in the creature's defence, bright and fearless, sprinted up along the path of one pinned tentacle, and landed a mighty blow upon its head.

It did exactly nothing.

Tentacles rose, ripping away from Zelgadis's spell, and slapped the swordsman down, sending his sword spinning away.

"ZEL," bellowed Lina from where she was standing on the rubble of the temple, wind whipping through her hair and eyes alight with the glow of the black magic in her hands.

"Gourry!" Zelgadis yelled, feet slamming into the ground as he dashed forward. Demon speed made him faster than either of his companions, and he grabbed Gourry as he sprinted through, leaping out of the way of one flying tentacle and nearly tripping over another.

He put on one panicked burst of speed as he heard Lina's voice rise to a gleeful crescendo. "_DRAGON SLAVE!_"

Light burst behind them, streaming their silhouettes huge and monstrous against the ground and the surrounding forest. Zelgadis could feel a wash of heat at his back.

The explosion was nearly soundless, in that it deafened him in the first split-second and left his head feeling numb and his ears ringing.

Then he was blinking up at the sky, missing the last few seconds. The air was full of dust and ash, and Gourry was on his feet, offering Zel his hand. Zel grabbed it and pulled himself to his feet.

"Phew," said Lina, touching lightly down next to them and dusting off her hands. She looked awfully smug.

"'Phew'," mimicked Zelgadis, rubbing the ear that was ringing the hardest. "You almost hit us," he pointed out, and Lina completely ignored him.

"We blew up the whole town," said Gourry.

"Well," said Lina, "so what if some stuff happened? We got rid of the monster."

A tentacle came out of the dust cloud and smacked into Lina, sending her sailing into Gourry, who fell on top of Zelgadis.

Lina swore. "All right," she said, pushing her flaming hair out of her eyes and getting to her feet. She wiped a smear of grime from her face. "Now I'm annoyed."

* * *

The Ragna Blade didn't work, either.

* * *

Zelgadis rolled away and the tentacle that missed him by inches. The crater that Lina had left with her first Dragon Slave gave them the high ground, but it also meant that they had a tendency to roll downhill and right into the mazoku's path every time they fell. Which was a lot.

He wasn't counting, but he was kind of bruised - although not as bruised as Gourry, whose armour didn't seem to be helping much. There was a bloody smear under his mouth, and his chest was heaving.

"He doesn't seem that powerful," Lina griped, scowling in frustration. The mazoku idly bulldozed a nearby swathe of forest with one tentacle.

"He seems pretty strong to me," panted Gourry, falling back.

"The Ragna Blade nearly took out _Gaav_, jellyfish brains," Lina said, scowling. "This thing isn't nearly as powerful as him. Not really. Our spells should be having _some_ effect."

"Lina's right," Zelgadis agreed. He felt like Gourry looked. Of the three of them, Lina was the one showing least wear. She'd been hurling the most powerful magic, but she'd also been well back from most of the physical confrontation.

"Lina!" Bellowed Gourry, and they all dropped as the mazoku lunged. A tentacle swiped through the area where their heads had been. They split up and dodged away.

Zelgadis got out of the way of a falling tree and leapt upon its broad trunk. He hurled a gaav flare at the mazoku, and it did the expected amount of damage - absolutely none. "Is it just me," he called over the sound of destruction as his spell kept going through the forest, ripping up everything in its way, "or is it leading us away from the temple?"

Lina paused, hands full of fire and wind, and glanced over at him. "You think there's something in there? Like that time with the dolls in Artemay Tower?"

Zelgadis looked uncertainly at the enormous mazoku. He wasn't sure what could possibly be using _that_ as a mere puppet.

"At this point," he said, breathing heavily, "I'm open to suggestions."

"It's worth a try!" she yelled back, and then turned and headed back toward Morthewil in a rush of magical flight.

The response from the mazoku was immediate - instead of drawing them away, its offence became hard and fast, tentacles flying, and suddenly Zelgadis and Gourry had their hands very much full just trying to stay alive.

"We've got to stall it!" Zelgadis yelled over the sound of splintering wood. The creature took a deep breath and spat something hot, green and flaming in his direction. It singed through Zelgadis's cloak as he rolled away, and kept going, leaving a smoking hole in the ground.

Gourry growled something vaguely affirmative between panting breaths. They were both tiring. If their guess was wrong - or if Lina couldn't find whatever the relic or talisman was -

Gourry dove back in, yelling fiercely, and sliced off a tentacle. It hit the ground with a meaty thud, and then a second later it had melted into the dirt and another had grown to replace it.

Zelgadis gritted his teeth. He cast a shadow snap spell on a knife and threw it toward the shadow of the creature.

The whole monster froze. Zelgadis exhaled a huge breath, shoulders slumping. Gourry dropped back, feet scraping on wood chips and old leaves.

It lasted about three seconds, and then the mazoku tore free with a roar. Zelgadis saw it coming, but there was no time to dodge: a huge slimy tentacle slapped him in the gut and sent him sailing into - and then through - a tree.

Splinters of wood burst around him. He couldn't breathe, he saw nothing but bright lights and a sliver of blue sky - and then he hit the ground, and it hurt somehow worse. He felt something in his knee go _crunch_ and he couldn't breathe - he couldn't -

He drew in a breath. Finally. Zelgadis's eyes watered.

He pieced together the concentration required to cast a healing spell on his knee. He needed to get back there, but he knew it couldn't be rushed. It took time. He breathed. He could see through the trees a flash of blond hair and armour glinting brazen in the bright light, which meant that Gourry was still going strong. Good.

"Come on, Lina," he muttered, getting gingerly to his feet.

An explosion rocked the ground and sent Zelgadis to his knees. He grabbed a tree trunk for stability and looked toward it.

A mushroom cloud bloomed into the sky behind them.

That would be Lina.

Somewhere in front, he heard Gourry make a singularly disgusted noise. It sounded a lot like "Hrgk."

When Zelgadis made it back to the clearing, he found Gourry beneath a pile of melting monster. It was brownish red, huge, smelled like an open grave and... bubbled.

"I think it's eating through my armour," said Gourry, struggling to disengage from the goop.

Lovely. Zelgadis held his nose with one hand and extended the other to Gourry.

* * *

"I couldn't find anything," Lina said breezily, shrugging. "So I just blew up the whole temple."

* * *

Morthewil was a write off. And also a crater. They straggled into the nearest town of any size five hours later, looking wrung out and worse for wear. Lina dragged her stumbling companions to an inn - the only inn, in fact - and sat down and demanded every scrap of food the owners could produce.

"Maybe you and your companions would like a bath, miss...?" wondered the innkeeper, staring at her and wringing his hands.

"Food," she said flatly.

"I," said Zelgadis, raising his hand. "I want a bath."

"_Food_," she growled, eyes alight and terrifying.

* * *

"You know," Lina said conversationally once her belly was more or less full and she was just gnawing at the bones of her meal, "You would have been in a lot of trouble if Xellos

hadn't tricked us into showing up at Morthewil."

Zelgadis, who still wasn't entirely sure Xellos hadn't tricked _him_ into going there in the first place, made a noise that could have been interpreted in many ways.

Lina looked at him with calculating eyes and pursed lips, but she didn't say anything. "I'm ready for a bath and then bed," she said, stretching widely. "Do you have plans?"

Zelgadis looked down at his own filthy hands. Gourry was dozing on the table. He smelled rank, even over the scents of cooking food.

He sighed. "There's a rumour about a buried library in the Desert of Destruction," he said finally.

"I've heard of that," Lina said thoughtfully. "We're headed in that direction - there's a bandit problem in Elmekia," she added, lips curling.

Zelgadis predicted that the bandit problem was unlikely to continue for long.

* * *

They parted ways at the border of Seyrunn, with Gourry and Lina determined to revisit Seyrunn City to "visit Amelia" - which Zelgadis suspected was code for "visit its restaurants". He declined their invitation to continue on with them, and not just because it was just as likely to end with the city in smithereens. Seyrunn City was huge and crowded and not quite as progressive as its population liked to think. For somebody who looked like Zelgadis, it was better not to tempt fate.

Once he was alone on the road again, Zelgadis breathed a sigh of relief. Birds chirped. The sun trickled through leaves and dappled the road. A horse grazed in a distant field. Travelling with Lina and Gourry was a lot of things, but never restful. He never thought he'd be looking forward to a long hideous march through a desert, but at least it was going to be quiet.

Or so he thought, until about two hours later, when Xellos dropped in out of nowhere. "On the road alone again?" He made a sympathetic noise and said, very cheerfully, "What a pity Morthewil turned out to be a dead end!"

Zelgadis blew him up. It didn't really help anything because Xellos bounced back like a poorly aimed rubber band, but it made him feel better.

(Lina Inverse does not have a monopoly on mushroom clouds.)


End file.
